What is Link Bait? | 10 Examples of Effective Link&nbspBait

This post was promoted from YouMoz. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Despite what most SEOs will tell you, it’s not easy to create outstanding content that people will want to link to. So many “SEOs” make it seem like there’s a key on your keyboard that magically turns what you just wrote into something link worthy. In reality, it’s never that simple.

I'm not one to keep throwing mud at the wall until it sticks. You can continuously tell someone to go create exceptional content, or you can actually show them an example. Because, being the sensible person I am, I'd rather choose the second option, here are 10 fantastic examples of link bait and what makes them so spectacular.

What is Link Bait?

Link Bait is providing valuable content on your website so that other websites will naturally reference/link to it without you ever having to ask. Linkable content can be anything from an in depth research project, to an evergreen guide, to a popular video.

10 Extraordinary Examples of Effective Link Bait:

Sidenote: PA stands for Page Authority, LRD stands for linking root domains, and TL stands for total links. Also, I didn't include .gov, .edu, or any other pieces of link bait from Moz besides the first one below. The same goes for .edu and .gov sites.

This is an article on the different search ranking factors by your very own Moz. With yearly updates, 132 contributors, and roughly 20 pages of content on one URL, this gives information on what search engines are measuring in order to rank websites. If you call yourself an SEO and you haven't read this, then I suggest you quietly open this up, read it twice, and hope no one noticed.

Why was it so successful?

This link bait was highly successful because of the visualizations, depth of content, the trust of the contributors involved, and the website it was hosted on (Moz is very influential in the SEO community). While the content is great, there's also a far greater reason for all of the links: Moz didn’t do the promotion; the contributors did. In the future, this should be your go to example for creating a collaborative study.

This is a chart about the radiation a person absorbs from various sources. This is a great way to visualize how much radiation poisoning you can get from things like airplane flights, x-rays, and CT scans.

Why was it successful?

Being able to visualize something that's hard to grasp is one of your best friends when creating link bait. By using tiny blocks to put together just how many "siverts" are in these different sources of radiation, this chart makes this concept very easy to understand. The key takeaway here is that if you can get people to understand your content, and actually read it all, the likelihood of them sharing and linking to it increases dramatically.

If you ever need a guide on what seafood to choose based on where you live or travel, this is your go to place. You can choose to download eight different regional guides, with two of them also available in Spanish.

Why was it so successful?

The main reason this was so successful was because of the outright awesome information these guides provide. They’re updated regularly (most recently July 2011) and they’re free for anyone that wants them. It also doesn’t hurt to have a top notch interactive map to help you choose the guide best for you.

Created by Aaron Wall & Andy Hagans, this is a list of 101 different link building strategies, and even though it’s over five years old, it still provides some of the best link building tips on the Web. To add a little humor, the last 30 tips are bad ways to build links.

Why was it successful?

Everyone loves lists. It’s that simple. It got traction in the right community, it’s easy to read, and it’s on a subject that people want to know about.

Published in 2005, this was and still is the go to resource to find out more about why your blog should be utilizing an RSS feed. It gives detailed analysis and can be translated to Brazilian and Portuguese (see links at the bottom).

Why was it successful?

When this was published, the post gave in-depth information on a relatively unexplored subject that people wanted to know about. It also provides ready-to-go snippets of code, making the content very actionable. On another note, one reason for its success that you might have noticed is the design of the website. There's no clutter and it's very easy to read.

OKCupid, a free online dating site, put together a test on what your political views are based on what your answers are to each question. This is one of many tests featured on OKCupid's site.

Why was it successful?

People like personalized content, such as tests and quizzes. In this case, people like to see how they scored, and they want to compare their score with their friends (thus, they link to it asking others to do it and share their results). There's also a bit of controversy involved with politics (just a bit?), which never hurts in terms of link juice.

This is an extensive guide to implementing SEO on the Wordpress CMS created by Joost de Valk.

Why was it successful?

It's the go-to resource because it has the best information on this subject all in one place. It's as simple as that. The information is instructional and easy to understand, and it's helpful in areas that people want to know about. With a resource like this, people will often cite information in it, and with each citation comes yet another link.

This is an infographic by Search Engine Journal on the growth of social media. This is a great visualization on the progress social media has made and what lies in the future according to statistical data.

Why was it successful?

In a nutshell, it's visually appealing. Putting such a great amount of raw data into an easy, understandable visualization is something I'd go out of my way to share. It also helps when it's initially displayed to a large audience (SEJ is a fairly popular SEO site if you didn't already know).

I'd also like to point out that although it may not have the sheer number of links some of the other pieces of link bait have, it's the quality of the links that count. This link bait got links from the Huffington Post, Reuters, and The Next Web.

This is a list of 112 different ways to conserve water. The tips are very short and provide quick, actionable information.

Why was it successful?

The first reason is because of each item's brevity. This list is quite easy to read and scan because each tip isn't a paragraph, it's a sentence. Another cool thing they did was highlight one specific tip out of every 10 or so. They enlarged the number, added a picture, and bolded the text. This puts emphasis on the specific item highlighted, and it's a great way to segment the list into something readable. Also, the post is listed in the website's navigation bar, making it easy to locate.

This is a visualization of how music has traveled over the past 200 years. As you play the timeline, new genres pop up around the world and you can see how they've moved and connected throughout the world.

Why was it successful?

Hmm. How wasn't it? If you aren't blown away, I'm sorry, because if this won't impress you, nothing will. The two main reasons it was successful are the quality of the visualization and the social share buttons on the page. Making it easy to share gets the page in front of more eyes, and more eyes means more links.

Yes, the link metrics show that it's not as successful as some of the ones above, but this is only because of how new this piece of content is.

About pointblankseo —
Jon Cooper is a link builder from Tarpon Springs, FL. He's a part time SEO consultant and currently blogs over at Point Blank SEO, his link building blog. If you need to get in touch, email him at jcooper@pointblankseo.com.

It's too early to judge the links, but this post from a dad on a blog about his son with Down Syndrome hit over 100,000 pageviews yesterday and has been retweeted by Target, has over 6000 facebook likes, has crashed the server at least once, etc. http://noahsdad.com/target-down-syndrome/.

It wasn't written as linkbait, but it sure has gotten attention. The author is an SEOmoz member, maybe we could ask him to write a YouMoz in a few weeks about how he got this type of visibility?

I think the best link bait for small businesses will be in the most challenging industries - interesting plumber content, etc.

The funny thing is you can produce a smash hit in a niche like this and no SEO would ever know about it, because it just looks like great content that normal (non-SEO) people find useful and they're the ones sharing or linking to it.

Great point Kane. The only thing about boring niches is that if you can some how find funny/interesting data, the fact that it's a boring niche can actually help because of the lack of this type of content.

For example, let's say you're in the ice cream niche. Blog posts on ice cream aren't usually worth reading (I'd rather eat than read about it IMO), but if you created an imbeddable piece of content (video, infographic, image, etc.), let's say on "the consumption of ice cream by location" (with the legend being by thousands of pounds of ice cream), then I guarentee if you outreached to get bloggers to imbed this, then they would do so, because they want to share something that's awesome for a change.

Accounting: How many transactions are made per minute, per hour, per day, etc. Also, how many transactions are made per country. You can do infographics on both of those (the first one would be more graphical, the second one could be a map).

Plumbing: You could make a flow chart based on the problem you are having and how to fix it. Make the flow chart easy to read, and include visuals of different plumbing tools & accesories.

Paper shredding - how much paper is shred each year, just like in the accounting example. You could also put together a "top 10 paper shredding fails" article on funny example of people either shredding something they weren't supposed to, people shredding important stuff out of frustration, etc. I think you could make a collection of these stories from doing some Google searches.

Anything else Kane? Try me ;) (for those who don't know, we're friends, so this was just in good fun!)

Good stuff Jon, I love coming up with linkbait ideas for 'boring' businesses, so I'm enjoying this. The trouble with some of these 'boring' niches is not that great content can't be made, but that great content often has a smaller audience of people who care, and reaching them takes a lot more effort than dropping links on FB/Twitter/LinkedIn.

The upside is that the standards for success are way lower. 15 new good links to a small business can be enough to own their niche, and build significant revenue. 15 links to a startup or a corporate-level piece of content would likely be considered a failure in many markets.

On another note - ego-boosting via articles such as "15 paper shredding experts weigh in on document security risk" can be huge in an otherwise unlinkable demographic.

Thanks Jon for giving us some realistic examples of link bait starting right from SEOmoz, and This was actually much easy and practical to understand and implement. It is being seen that in last year, the usages of infographics have played great role in making viral like contents and the main thing which I learned from your post is that the representation of any information(if it is done in easy and lucrative way) plays important role in understanding and the probablity of sharing, e.g. the SEOmoz's Ranking factors!! and additionally, If we do some brainstorming(as recommended by Distilled) before creating any content for linkbait, that would lead to much success. May be I could think and write a post about world's Largest 11k Megapixel photograph image with panorama view.

Thanks jrcooper.. for rewarding me!!! I agree to you, Moz and distilled's blog are way to start and learn and even your blog is worth to follow.. Just read your posts and one of them which I liked a lot is "is link building becoming content marketing?" They are easy to read and follow !! :)

Always love examples of great linkbait, thanks. Where do you think the direction of linkbait is headed? It seems that Infographics are still hot, but do you think more interactive infographics and animations will be the next thing?

I honestly think linkbait will become "socialbait". People will start caring less about links in future years because social popularity will become the new link popularity. This would be for manipulation purposes.

Completely agree with developments that Google could be implementing such as interaction rank and agent rank I don't think it will be long before the way that things are shared, how many times and by whom will become far more important than the traditional link graph (although seeing as though links are what Google was born from I can't see Google ever letting go of them).

Good point! But I think social spam will be a little easier to fight because spotting out twitter accounts used only to follow others is much more easier than spotting sites used solely for linking to money sites. Just my perspective :)

I think it used to be the case thatg social would be easier to game than traditional links however when you start taking into account the way in which accounts interact as well as their authority in specific areas I'd suggest it's going to be quite difficult to mimic human interactions - and Google will have enough data before long through Google+ (not to mention the other social sites they've been monitoring) to be able to see what's going on and how people really interact with each other.

I think the trend will be towards HTML5 implementations and interactive content like you said. We've all seen tall format infographics and some just fade into the background noise - that won't be the case if you produce Shiny New Object versions of the same content. Of course the most successful willl be the most creative implementations that noone has thought of yet...

As a primarily SEO chap, I'm often looking for ways to explain to the in-house Content team how they can more effectively cater for our Link bait requirements in the work they are already doing. Kind of figures & goes hand-in-hand that if a piece of content is more appealing as link bait then it's surely going to be more appealing to readers too.

Your post here will certainly help to explain ways of ensuring that link requirements (such as 'highly desired topics' and 'making it visually appealing') can be more effectively catered for.

Thanks Simon! I agree that finding the right topics and making it easy on the eyes are HUGE when it comes to creating share-able (and link-able) content. I think finding the right balance between fun content and niche content that's useful is something that we need to do.

Great post and usefull advices at the end of the post. i also want to point out the fact that the majority of websites you took to illustrate this post are those who invested in design before the whole majority of seo experts understand the power of a great design in a linkbuilding or baiting perspective!

I spent a few weeks redesigning my blog, and when I relaunched it, I can almost guarentee the reason it has gotten so much success is the design. I hate to call out a certain site, but sitesketch101 is a blog that has an outstanding design, but the content is average.

This is very practical approach towards the subject... Theoretically this sounds really easy to create a content that really hit the people mind and people start sharing and relate to it but in real drafting something that really hit-it-off required one hell of a market research, brain storming and analytical mind.

Providing example of successful link baiting content is really a great concept and this actually gives the idea of how and why people like and link to it.

The best thing I like about the post is the top 10 lessons in the conclusion section... and No.1 is Get influencers involved as this is the key, no matter how good your content is if you are not going to involve influencers (or if they don’t play their part in it) this is very difficult for a content to get as much popularity as shown above.

I agree 100% Moosa. You hit the nail on the head - influencers control niches, and they control the success of your linkbait.

Also, in the first paragraph, when you said highly successful linkbait requires "one hell of a market research, brain storming and analytical mind", I completely agree. It's more than just the characteristics above; it's about planning, researching, and executing, and this isn't accomplished by the average SEO joe. That's why only a small % of linkbait actually succeed.

If you make fantastic content or content people are going to talk about it is going to link worthy. If you get the story on social sites and news sites then instantly it is going to go wild from the link aspect.

We're having the same issue as Carlos described above... We're one of the largest online resources / communities for a certain car brand, so our content is great for organic search, but not so much for "sharing". Our challenge is brainstorming something that will help us reach out to people who might never have considered using a resource like ours to help them with an automotive question.

Nice post, Jon. I agree when you wrote, "it’s not easy to create outstanding content that people will want to link to". So very true, although I would like that magic button, particularly if I'm the only one who has it!

I'll also add that I agree with your comment above regarding the future of linkbait. Definitely moving toward "socialbait" in my humble opinon.

This is a great list, Jon. I often notice content that screams to me, "this is linkbait." Users aren't stupid, and they can tell too. More often than not, crappy linkbait fails. In all of the excellent examples you provided (with one exception, in my optinion), the content was remarkably thorough.What do I mean by thorough? Look at how many references Randall cited on his radiation chart! Ask the agency (I know who it was, but I don't know if it's an NDA thing) how long it took them to design the Dance infographic. All of these took some seriously significant effort.

My favourite example is Oyster.com, as they cater equally well to the consumer and the linkerati, but manage both groups really well. Their content pages (e.g., http://www.oyster.com/hawaii/hotels/four-seasons-maui/) are superb examples of how to make a definitive, authoritative page on a topic, and their linkbait (http://www.oyster.com/hotels/photo-fakeouts/) plays on their strengths, and resonates beyond their core audience. I always share this with clients as an example of somebody doing these elements right; even though there's obviously room to take it up to the next little with a bit of refinement!

OK cupid had another BRILLIANT piece: "Why you should never pay for online dating." Where they laid out why most pages are a scam. Really brilliant, unfortunately pulled after their acquisition ;-)Besides that: xkcd is a really great comic and your post is awesome!

What are your thoughts on interactiveinfographics? The next big thing for 2012? A lot of the static examples above could easily be adapted, with some work, to become even more link bait worthy with a little interaction.

These are great examples. Much harder to do than they make it appear - just look at all the awesome articles out there that get little notice. Base hits that capture a few shares are certainly worthwhile, too, of course.

I tend to focus most on guest opportunities where I can guarantee at least one quality link every time. Not sexy, but they sure do add up. Generating all that content is also a good way to develop what I hope become "blockbuster" linkbait ideas where my sites get the lion's share of link juice.

Good points, but I don't think anyone should only guest post. Guest blogging is great, but only when it's in balance with a few other factors, such as making sure the content on your site is as HQ as possible (so once they come, they stay). It might be time focused on content, but it increases the likelihood of links both naturally and during outreach.

I read your article today morning and found it very useful in understanding the basic concepts of Link Baiting.Clear concept with best practical examples sited.Thanks a lot for sharing this article.Quite Helpful for beginners.

We built a page that's pretty solid but we are still working to get it promoted properly. http://www.insightpest.com/pest-control It has expert tips on pest control from over 100 people. So far the avg time on page is over 5 minutes, and it's getting some shares on facebook, but promotion is definitely a work in progress. Thanks for sharing this list. I enjoy seeing these success stories. Hopefully we can all get there too.

This is to give you examples of what's working. Have you ever tried creating linkbait? It's not easy, and you're never going to be successful everytime. I just wanted to show you what's worked in the past to give you a better idea of what characteristics of linkbait work well.

I agree, as I can only speculate, but when you look at these very successful examples, there's something different that set them apart, and I did my best to identify them.

"Are these pieces even, technically, link bait? Or are we just now using that word for anything that attracts links?"

"Link bait is any content or feature, within a website, designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website." - Wikipedia.

When you say is this technically link bait, and then say "just anything that attracts links", you honestly contradict yourself. I put the definition above, because I don't think you understand what link bait is then. I'm not trying to be critical, I just think there's a misunderstanding.

This is the definite Great point. I read all things carefully and I really very appreciate it. I was looking for something new for SEO and social media marketing and now I get 1 from here. I will start working and it’s thoroughly value the effort. Please keep it continue and I will keep updates with you.

Nice work. Those are some pretty great linkbait examples. I wish there was a more comprehensive guide to more examples with some details on how to think your way through the process. I know it's a tricky sort of thing to explain as much of it is very market specific, and there are no rules or anything...

I think i'll study each one of these a little more in depth, and will probably find some great insights that i can apply to my market.